English
English commended at times to believers in Europe and Asia; decision as to world language left to leaders or possibly House of Justice[edit]
“With regard to Arabic, in several Tablets Baha'u'llah praises the vastness and eloquence of the Arabic language, but in none of His Writings does He state that His followers are required to learn that language. In a number of instances `Abdu'l-Baha and the Guardian have both encouraged the believers in the West to learn Persian. Similarly, `Abdu'l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi on occasion encouraged believers in Europe and Asia to study English. And, as you are no doubt aware, the involvement of the friends in the study of Esperanto has also been deemed praiseworthy. However, the choice as to which language will ultimately be selected as the international auxiliary language has been left by Baha'u'llah, in His Book of Laws, to the leaders of the nations or possibly to the House of Justice to decide.”
Acquire the English language to translate Tablets[edit]
"Endeavor as much as thou canst to acquire the English language with the utmost of eloquence and excellence, so that thou mayest be enabled to translate the Tablets into the Japanese tongue. This is my advice. Certainly exert thy utmost endeavor to attain this bounty."
To wait and see how European nations receive English as a world auxiliary language; prejudice against an existing language is not an argument against its possible use[edit]
"He was interested in your efforts to make the English language, which undoubtedly is the most generally spoken and widely understood, the world’s auxiliary language, and we must wait and see how other European nations receive it. Of course as you had well put it, the mere existence of prejudice is no argument against the possibility of making an existing language universal. The world must try to overcome its many defects and not reinforce it. Perhaps the main consideration in future will be the specific qualities of a language as being exact, rich and easy to learn for both East and West."
Pending international decision, English is filling the gap to some extent for a universal language[edit]
"Until a decision is taken by international agreement, the effect of such developments as the Internet, the management of air traffic, the development of technological vocabularies of various kinds, and universal education itself, has been to make it possible, to some extent, for English to fill the gap."
- (Century of Light, p. 128)
English not to be regarded as a language of Revelation despite interpretation into English by Shoghi Effendi[edit]
"With respect to your inquiry about whether, in the Bahá'í context, English might possibly be regarded as a language of Revelation, the House of Justice asks us to explain that, while Shoghi Effendi's translations of the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh into English carry with them a large measure of interpretation of the intent and purpose of the Author of the text -- an interpretation which he, as Interpreter of the Sacred Text, could alone authoritatively provide -- one should not conclude that the English language into which the Writings were translated could, therefore, be considered as a language of Revelation."
