The Future of English – Basil de Selincourt

Basil de Selincourt, in 1926, wondered about the threats hanging over his language: English, indeed, was experiencing unprecedented growth. He writes: “English is, to all appearances, like the chirping of a sparrow—a sound capable of following men wherever they go, and sounding under all the roofs where they shelter themselves from the elements. It has almost a capacity. The crude shelter attracts the lazy, ignores the discomfort, and Thrives in the absence of grace, haunts itself with a terrifying vision of a world in which the ability to multiply and the more refined species have been banished and the vast reign of sparrows. A similar horror seizes the humanist when it occurs to him that English may become the language of the human race. wonders. A feature of English genius, so that half-baked bricks and junk machines are unlikely to one day invade the world. Doesn’t the unbridled fertility of our neem tongue only help spread? : It gives opportunity to dominate in a dictatorial way when it spreads. To tell the truth, it is already too widely spoken for its own good, and even if we had all the machinery to consolidate it, its expansion would end in its downfall.” But Basil’s evident care affects de Selincourt. He is a lover of his own language, considering at present the state in which it holds the world. It affects everyone with