THE TOWER OF BABEL COMPOUNDED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000300570031-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 29, 1999
• Sequence Number: 31
• Publication Date: July 12, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

WASHINGTON POST AND
Sanitized - Approved F~~IIA-RD
JUL 12 1964
FOIAb3b
CPYRGHT
CPYRGHT
1 The Tower of Ba bel Compounded
By Jacob Ornstein
Ornstein is a language train-
ing officer at the, Agriculture
Department Graduate School.
new African state s a. session
of Parliament is goipg on.
What is so unusual 'about
this? Nothing, except that it
is being; eanducted in Eng-
lish - a tongue understood
by less than 5 per cent of
Ghanaian citizens.
The fact- -Is that Ghana has
more than 100 languages. And
to' have chosen any one of
them ,as. the official tongue
would have , caused bitter-
ness and envy among the:
other groups and tribes., l
African. areas formerly held
by . ielgium and France
_French has become the'"nn
tinnal" language, again` in
countries where only a jiny
minority can speak decent
french.
The desperate need to
f.lid some common language
of communication h a s
caused' the lcedevs of,. the
new $ ates, madly of them
anti?We?tern, and Aationaltst-
ic,. to, rj1jT on the tongues of
their former masters, since
World, War II, more than 50,
new nations Have come into
,existence, mang"of them with
a -:welter of languages; In
Ug tnda, for example, the
national radio must broad-
cast in 13 different lan
guages. '
Africa but also those of once they have been selected: language too "rude" to be,
would make, the polyglot : that has been used. only for, were at one time considered
confusion of Biblical days everyday tribal needs, with crude dialects unsuitable for
only two, Swahili and Hausa. ;' about the nature of language were no terms for "deep
are. spoken by as much as 8 misunderstood; even by some freezer," "atomic reactor" or
per cent of the population. ? highly e d u c ate 4 nonlin- "j e t air c r a f t," but the
Many of these tongues have guists.: Contrary to the idea modern versions of those
it e ve r been reduced to that some tongues are in- tongues have all these terms
writings of any importance. .1 the fact is that within its constantly add terms in line
in Sou t h Asia, I n d I a + own grammatical structure,
,~i.,L 1 LictuluoIS. gnat na- '1
.tion is striving to operate," w that is required is for
i
e
l
d
rin
no
agy an
vocab-
with Hindi as the over-al lula t
? ?ularv' to be coined or bor-
put mesa new terms
as Rajasthani, Bengali and L ir
r
e
eu for
r
l
, e ti u c a t i o n,a l and tionaries, periodicals, books
ficial
vast land is still obliged to " DEVELOPING a language
depend upon English, which or dialect for broad usage is
science of language plan- Let it be recalled that
with the developments of
sociology or science or
world events. For example,
the unpleasant term "geno-
cide," referring to the de-
struction of entire peoples,
was coined right after World
War II and has been incor-
porated into most Western
languages:
-tTnergent
there has simply not been
time enough to develop the
native tongues, most of
which had never been re-
duced to writing and many
of which were not under-
standable to large segments
of the population. Among
t h e few. exceptions a r e
Swahili in the East and
Conti meal
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300570031-9
 Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300570031-9
CPYRGHT
JUL 12 1964
ausa in the West, both anidable one. Even such es-
ideiv used and boasting' a' tablished governments as .
1 mita but growing litera-
re. Belgium and Canada con-
The choice of English or tinue to suffer strains be-
French as the "national" cause of the competition
ficial tongue, is bringing. between ' Flemish and French
out some curious conse- in the former' and English
nences. In most of these ` and French in the latter;
ev,- lands only a tiny per- Examples of new states
mtage can speak these which have chosen bilingual
ngues. of wider. eommuni- patterns a re Afghanistan
tioa. This means, in effect, (Pashto and Persian), Al-
at a knowledge of these geria (Arabic and French).
nguages opens doors to Ceylon (Sinhalese and Tam.
lite status, political position il), Rwanda (Kinyarwanda
nd leadership in educationA and French), Cam e r o u n
chnology and just about (French and English) and
very field. E u r u no i (Kirundi a n d
Unfortunately school facil French). Only one African
ties and competent in laod has adopted a native
tructors are in such short tongue as the exclusive- of-
upply'. that only a minority ficial language., That is
f :the young people in! Tanganyika; with Swahili in
frican lands can ever ac- . that"position,
wire these 1 a n g u a g es. In a world divided by 3000
languages, French and Eng
EIGHT NEW African na-~; lish have ,become important
fenya, ons have chosen English as ; instruments for unity. As
eir sole official medium: time passes, t h e n a t i v e
Uganda, Ghana, Bech-! vernaculars will be built up
orm(;rly parts of French or
elgian-- colonial holdings,'
ve adopted French: Cen-
ral African Republic,- Chad,
a h o me y, Gabon, Niger,l
enegal, Togo, Con~go
Brazzaville), ;Congo .(Leo-
oldville), Guinea, and Mali.
)ne nation, Ca,meroun,i
pted.to make both French ;
and English official.
.Very few nations have
h o s e n multilingual solu-
iohs since the problem of
onducting official business,
roviding identical transla-
ions s and the like is a for-
rn Rhodesia, Southern
,todesia and Sierra Leone.
r
he following 11 states,` all
the great world language
are destined to play an im-
portant role for some time.
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300570031-9