The Changing Distribution of Languages. The Lingua Franca

The distribution of language use also changes frequently. Throughout history, language distributions have changed in response to changing political and economic events.

The Lingua Franca. In some countries, all or most of the population speaks the same language. Nearly all Swedes speak Swedish and nearly all Costa Ricans speak Spanish. Many other countries are populated by speakers of many different languages. India, Nigeria, and Indonesia are countries having large numbers of indigenous yet mutually unintelligible languages.

How can a government encourage communication among its citizens who speak different languages? This task is undertaken with the use of a lingua franca. A lingua franca is a language used within a country or region for commerce, government, and education.

In countries with histories of European colonial dominance, the lingua franca is the language of the European colonial power that had occupied the country. English is the lingua franca of India and Nigeria, both former British colonies. Russian was the lingua franca of the Soviet Union, and it is expected to serve the same function in the new Commonwealth of Independent States.

In some countries, communication between different ethnic groups is facilitated with trade languages. Trade languages are artificial languages created by modifying two or more existing languages. Swahili is a trade language spoken in East Africa. Trade languages are developed in such a way that their syntax and grammar are simple and easy to learn. Simplicity and flexibility allow large numbers of people from different ethnic backgrounds to communicate effectively.

Some former colonies have been active in developing national languages from trade languages. The 200 million residents of Indonesia are scattered across more than thirteen thousand islands off the Southeast Asian coast, thus establishing over two hundred mutually unintelligible languages(Figure 4-9). Many belong to the Malayo-Polynesian family, but Papuan, Melanesian, and other families are also represented.

Figure 4-9. Bahasa Indonesia. Indonesia consists of over twenty thousand islands located between the Indian and Pacific oceans. Over two hundred distinct languages belonging to several different language families are spoken in Indonesia. In order to facilitate communication, the government commissioned the establishment of Bahasa Indonesia; however, fluency in this national language varies from region to region

In order to deal with the major communications problems associated with the large number of indigenous languages, the government of Indonesia has advocated the development and use of a national language known as Bahasa Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesia is based on the trade language spoken in Malaya. Its vocabulary includes many words of Sanskrit, Hindi, and Arabic origins, and it had been used to facilitate commercial activities among the many cultures living in Southeast Asia. After several years of intensive planning, government experts approved a vocabulary of 328,000 words and promoted use of the new language in schools, businesses, and government agencies.

The Malay language upon which Bahasa Indonesia is based belongs to a different family than the one that includes Javanese and other languages spoken on the major islands of Indonesia. The Indonesian government developed a national language based on Malay as opposed to Javanese. There were two major reasons behind this decision. First, the Malay language had been developed as a language of trade between cultural groups in Southeast Asia, much in the same manner as Swahili. As a result, Bahasa Indonesia is simpler and easier to learn than other Indonesian languages, and its use has been instrumental in promoting trade between Indonesia and its neighbors.

Second, the decision to adopt a non-Javanese language was based on political considerations. Residents of the less densely populated outer islands of Indonesia feared that the establishment of Javanese as a national language would enhance the already considerable political power of Java at the expense of other areas.

Bahasa Indonesia is now used for all government business, education, and nationwide communications. Furthermore, government policy discourages the development of regional languages within Indonesia. According to government officials, over 60 percent of Indonesia's population were fluent in Bahasa Indonesia by 1980, although this percentage varies considerably from one region to another (Figure 4-9).

Some trade languages, called pidgin languages, are derived from languages of different families. Pidgin languages are spoken in ports and other areas where communication between people of widely different cultural back-grounds is needed. A pidgin language derived from English, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and native Hawaiian developed to facilitate trade and communication among members of the many different ethnic groups who interact in the ports of Hawaii. Other pidgin languages are spoken in Hong Kong. Singapore. New Guinea, and the Caribbean islands.

Trade and pidgin languages have no native speakers. Rather, people speak them as second languages to communicate with others who do not speak their native language. The pidgin language of Papua New Guinea, however, has recently been evolving into a full-scale language of its own. Numerous indigenous languages of different families are spoken in Papua New Guinea. The pidgin language that has developed has a vocabulary largely of English origin, but many other languages are represented as well.

After Papua New Guinea achieved political independence, this pidgin language became a lingua franca among the hundreds of tribes that had no other common means of communication. Today, two-thirds of Papua New Guinea's people speak pidgin, and an increasing percentage speak it as a first language. Newspapers and books are written and published in Papuan pidgin, and many other works of literature are translated into the language. Debates in the Papuan parliament are conducted in Papuan pidgin. In short. Papua New Guinea's pidgin is rapidly evolving into a full-scale national language.