The languages of empires also follow a bell curve, but a slightly different “normal distribution” than the empires themselves. There is a curious mathematical consistency in the relationship between the bell curves of empires and the bell curves of their associated languages.
The Greco-Macedonian Empire, for example, can be seen as peaking during the time of Alexander the Great (336 to 323 B.C.), having risen from the empires of the Greek city-states and their forced merger under the Macedonian Philip, and declining as Alexander’s empire fragmented, for lack of an articulated plan of succession, into smaller successor empires ruled by his former subordinates. Yet the peaking of the Greek language, in terms of its widespread and frequent use, will happen centuries later.
The same is true of the Roman Empire, which arguably peaked around 100 or 150 A.D., and its language. Not only was the empire’s peak long past, but the empire itself was gone, having fallen in 476 A.D., by the time Latin peaked. More Latin was spoken, heard, written, and read after 476 A.D. than before this date.
Other examples abound. France was no longer a major player in geopolitics when the use of the French language as a standard for international diplomacy, trade, and travel later peaked.
This pattern can be visualized as two bell curves mapped on the same Cartesian plane, with the x-axis representing time, and the y-axis representing widespread use of the language. The two curves will be offset but overlapping. The curve with its peak to the left, i.e., earlier in time, will represent the rise and fall of the empire. The curve with its peak to the right will represent the rise and fall of the use of the language, which lags behind the empire’s curve. Obviously, both curves will begin to the right of the y-axis, i.e., when the value for the time variable is a positive number.
This principle seems still to be in effect. English is in widespread use around the world, long after the British Empire has ceased to dominate the globe.
