I'm
referring to your article in Cafebabel.
The
Esperanto option, you say, "would inevitably
result in politicians speaking a different language
to their electorate, effectively taking the demos
out of democracy."
I'm
afraid you've mixed up two different situations.
The politician-politician relationship is quite
different from the politician-electorate one. What
is paramount in the politician-politician relationship,
if we value democracy, is that they stand on an
equal footing. There is no equality if non-English-speakers
are to use English in meetings or in interactions
with colleagues who are native English speakers.
This is the opposite of the democratic spirit, since
it gives an unfair advantage to a given section
of the people concerned without any merits on their
part.
Unless
you belong to the tiny minority of people who have
been exceptionally privileged in the field of languages,
when you express yourself in a foreign language,
you are like a right-handed person forced to use
his or her left hand. You're awkward, you're racking
your brain for the right word, you have an accent
which, whether it sounds bizarre, laughable or simply
exotic, presents an image of you which is at variance
with your real self, as it is perceived by your
fellow citizens when you use your own language,
your vocabulary is restricted so that you don't
say exactly what you want, you drop many nuances
: your freedom of expression is limited, even if
you're not aware of it.
The
European Parliament has emphasized this point in
a report on language use:
"Whoever
has struggled to learn a foreign language knows
that a true capacity to speak one is a rare occurrence.
As a rule, the mother tongue is the only one which
can be mastered with all its subtlety. There is
no doubt that one finds oneself politically most
forceful when expressing oneself in one's own language.
Using the mother tongue is to enjoy an advantage
over those who - willingly or not - are burdened
with a language which is not their own. (European
Parliament, Rapport sur le droit à l'utilisation
de sa propre langue, 22 march 1994, p.10.)
For
reasons pertaining to neuropsychology (see Claude
Piron, "Le défi des langues"
, Paris : L'Harmattan, 2nd ed. 2001, chapters 6
and 7), Esperanto is the only foreign language in
which you can feel as much at ease as in your mother
tongue. Age and number of hours per week being equal,
six months of Esperanto give a communication capability
which, in the case of English, demands six years.
It suffices to compare in practice a few international
sessions, some in English, some in Esperanto, to
see how superior the latter are, whatever the criterion
: spontaneity, equality among participants, precision,
richness of expression, humour, etc. (see my article
"Linguistic
Communication - A Comparative Field Study"
, http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/communication.htm). This system is undeniably the most democratic : nobody is spared
the effort of learning the language thanks to her
or his birth place, but the required effort is quite
reasonable, as compared with other languages : it's
a matter of a few months for all participants.
Moreover,
if Esperanto is adopted at the politician-politician
level, it will mean that its value has been acknowledged
by governments. This official recognition will encourage
simple citizens to learn the language, which is
no big deal. The gap between politicians and electorate
would thus disappear. Demos would return to democracy,
simply through honest and factual information on
the language situation and on the results of objective
comparison of the different means applied by humankind
to overcome the language barriers.
It
would be wise to place the above considerations
in the light of the data collected by Professor
of Economics François Grin on the various
options in language policy, and in particular to
take into account two facts he emphasizes in a recent
report (L'enseignement des langues vivantes étrangères
comme politique publique, Geneva : Service de la
recherche en éducation, 2005, see http://www.revue-republicaine.org/spip/breve.php3?id_breve=0255) :
(1)
The advantage that the United Kingdom derives from
the present dominant status of English can be estimated
at 17 billion euros per year (without quantifying,
of course, the superiority enjoyed by its citizens
in any negotiation or discussion) ;
(2)
The net amount that would be saved by Europe if
it adopted Esperanto can be estimated at 25 billion
euros per year.
Taking
all those facts into consideration, is there any
doubt about which is the most democratic approach
?
Yours sincerely,
CP
