language for communication

[Lars Martin Fosse]

>
>>I doubt very much that serious French and German scholars would not post
>>because it would be too time-consuming. If a Norwegian can learn how to
>>communicate in English, so can the French and the Germans.
>
>If a Norwegian can learn to communicate in English, then we can all learn
>to communicate in Chinese. There is a large body of people in China we
>could write for.

Certainly, given time, resources and motivation. One problem though: Chinese
is not a "world language" quite in the sense that English is (in spite of
the fact that it is spoken by a rather large number of people). If I may
remind you, English is the European language that most educated Indians
master. English is already established in a large number of fields as the
international means of communication. 

>It is not a question of what we can do. It is a question of which
>investments of our time we choose to make and how we are taught languages
>in school. Undoubtedly any capable scholar could learn to be fluent in any
>given language. But does he want to spend his time doing that.

In other words: Does he really want to communicate? This line of argument
seems absurd to me. If I were to write in Norwegian, which you suggest I
could, I would hardly communicate at all. This is a situation known to all
speakers of minority languages. When it comes to communication, there are no
free lunches either. But anyway, you touch upon something which is important
in this context: Is it fair to demand of our Asian / Indian colleagues that
they should spend their time learning a few extra European languages instead
of learning other Asian languages. If I were a Hindi speaker, I might find
it more profitable for various reasons to spend my time learning Bengali or
Marathi than on learning, say, French, Russian or German. Europeans may want
to learn these languages for various reasons - not only Indological - and
also have easy access to study material and ample opportunity to practice. 

>>The important
>>question is: How many in the world community of Indologists are able to read
>>French and German (not to mention Russian and Italian) with ease? When I see
>>bibliographies at the end of papers produced in India, there are hardly
>>references to anything written by Germans or French scholars. This may
>>partly reflect the state of the local libraries.
>
>Surely this represents a failure to learn to communicate in French and German.
>
>>There is, however, a
>>Sanskrit World Conference coming up in January, and it might be an idea to
>>discuss the question there, in a contest which is not dominated by
>>Westernes. If I remember correctly, one of the reasons why Dumezil's work
>>had trouble reaching the USA was that he wrote in French, which a large
>>number of American scholars do <not> read with ease. That is a pity, because
>>Dumezil was extremely important (no matter what you think of his ideas).
>
>I do not know about American scholars, but British scholars certainly read
>Dumezil in French as he was published. The reason they did not refer to him
>much was because they did not rate his ideas very highly !

Here I can only refer to my quotation from Littleton: 

"Yet with a very few exceptions, this new comparative mythology [of Dumezil]
has been totally ignored by British and American anthropologists, even by
those primarily concerned with the analysis of myth and folklore. The
principal reason for their neglect - *aside from the fact that as yet none
of Dumezil's works have been translated into English* [my emphasis] - would
seem to lie in the history of the relationship between comparative mythology
... and anthropology."(p. 2)

But my information may be too limited. 

>>To
>>repeat myself: What it boils down to, is communication. If you choose to
>>communicate in a language that a group of potential readers do not read, and
>>refuse to use a language that the same group does read, then you are
>>excluding them. So: Do you want to exclude the readers that don't read
>>French or German?
>
>That's absurd. By that argument the use of any language would involve a
>decision to exclude the majority of the world that don't read that language
>- even English isn't that widely read !

I fail to see the logic of this argument. We are writing for a certain
scholarly community, primarily other Indologists, but also for any other
scholar who for various reasons takes an interest in Indological matters.
The vast majority of these people are capable of communication in English.
This is not true of other languages. Using English as a "business language"
is a pragmatic recognition of the fact that this is the vehicle that reaches
most people. 

>As far as I am concerned, contributions in Norwegian would be perfectly
>welcome. (But I would reply in English!)

You and I could very well communicate in that way, but the others would
immediately drop out of the conversation. I have no problem accepting the
use of Europe's "canonical" languages (English, French, German, Italian and
Spanish) in scholarly debates as long as we are among Europeans. But
Indology is a global business. The question is: Is it fair to our colleagues
in India, Japan and elsewhere in Asia to expect them to work their way
through four or five European languages to be able to participate in a
discussion, when we could agree upon using one language. Even if English is
not quite so universal as some people might think it is still the Latin of
our time.

Best regards,

Lars Martin Fosse