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Ann Thorac Surg 2002;73:15-16
© 2002 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

Editorial

Writing in a borrowed tongue

L. Henry Edmunds, Jr, MD*a

a Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

* Address reprint requests to Dr Edmunds, Editor, The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, 5000 Ravdin Court, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, 3400 Spruce St, Philadelphia, PA 19104-4283, USA
e-mail: ats@uphs.upenn.edu

Anatomists use the word "tongue" to designate an anatomic part; poets use the word to mean language. Poets speak of men with "forked tongue" to connote slanders, lies and serpent-like deceit and in so doing illustrate the richness of the English language and also its bewildering complexity. When verb tenses, articles, complex sentence construction, impossible spelling and an almost infinite number of word choices are added, few who were not born to the language, would elect English "the language of science." Yet, for various reasons English has become the common language of our profession and, at the same time, a heavy burden for over half of our colleagues.

English is only one of 2,700 languages and is the first language for only 350 million of the world’s 6.2 billion people. Another 400 million use English as a second language, but still far more people speak dialects of Mandarin Chinese than dialects of English. The modern world has need of a common language; air traffic control is one such need. Unlike Chinese, English is spoken by at least a few people nearly everywhere and this dispersion, which largely occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries, more than any other reason, established English as the default language between speakers of differing tongues. The development of global air travel and telecommunications in the 20th century accelerated the use of English as a second language. Now it is the predominant language of telecommunications, computer databases, science and to a lesser extent business.

Attempts to define "standard spoken English" have failed [1]; like any widely used language English now has many dialects. And, as many realize, there are different versions of written English. If lexicographic quibbles are ignored, "standard written English" may be defined as text that can be easily understood by anyone who . . . [Full Text of this Article]




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