Ideas - English: Friend or Frenemy?

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

English may have a reputation for being a "linguistic imperialist," pushing local languages into obscurity but linguist Mario Saraceni argues English should be viewed as a global language with multiple versions existing on equal footing. *This episode originally aired on May 19, 2023.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad.

Well, the difference between global and international is that many, many languages are international. And what international means is the language that's used across more than one country. So you think about Arabic or think of French even, or even German. There's a lot of languages that are spoken in more than one country, and that makes them international. In 400 years, English went from being a small language spoken in the British Isles to becoming the most dominant language in the world. It's not merely an international language. It's global. English as a global language is a good term to use precisely because it means something different than international. But we shouldn't think that

English is spoken by the majority of people in the world. English is still paradoxically a minority language, if that makes any sense, meaning that most people in the world don't speak English. Global just means it is found and used far more widely than any other language. Okay, so you guys went, and how far? So two and a half hours? It's two and a half hours. English is present all over the world as an enduring legacy of colonialism. No, nothing. It was just us. But it's also a global language of commerce and culture, overtaking local languages and pushing them aside.

They were like Janak Puri, Ram Puri, something like that. I'm like, what is this? So many different puris. Some think of English as a gift. Others call it a bully, a loudmouth, a thief. Others call it a bully, a loudmouth, a thief. But some argue there's a need to rethink English and see it as a language with multiple versions standing on equal footing. Yeah, so my name is Mario Saraceni.

I'm a reader in English language and linguistics at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. And can you just tell me the term reader, which is not a common term that we use here? Ideas producer Nahid Mustafa asks the question, English, friend or frenemy? Yeah, reader actually is the same as associate professor. It's equivalent to that. In fact, we are in the process of changing reader to that exactly for the reason that you've mentioned, because people around the world are not necessarily familiar with the term. So it means associate professor. aspect of English, I don't know if widespread-ness is a word, but the widespread aspect of English,

you know, brings about that question whether English is a gift or whether English is a monster. Does it have to be either of those things? Well, yes, that's a really good question. I mean, a lot of people feel very negative about the presence of English in this global context. And they tend to think of it as a monster, as a language that kills other languages and kills other cultures and kind of colonizes it, you know, as a continuation of imperialism and so on and so forth. Other people see it as a gift, you know, as something that gives opportunities, that enhances careers,

makes communication, international communication easier, and so on. And so, I mean, the fact is that both these aspects are true, but they're not mutually exclusive in the sense that, you know, when we're talking about a global language, in fact, when we talk about language in general, we're talking about something extremely complex. So we'll get into some of those complexities in a bit, but I want to sort of clarify a couple of terms before we go on further.

Is the term English-speaking world at all a useful term? I don't like it particularly because it suggests that whatever we refer to when we say world, you know, you could say English-speaking country or English-speaking world or English-speaking region or whatever. What that tends to mean is that that world or english speaking region or whatever what that tends to mean is that that world or that part of the world speaks english and and that's simply not true because english in the vast majority of cases english exists and is used in conjunction and alongside other languages so a lot of people in the world probably the majority of people in the world, probably the majority of people in the world are multilingual. So they speak more than one language. Very often they speak three, four

languages and English is one of them. And sometimes English, in fact, very often English is not, it does not feature at all. So when we say English speaking world or English speaking anything, world or English-speaking anything, it's misleading because it kind of erases the presence and the importance of other languages that coexist with English. Another term, dialect. You and I had a conversation about this before we did this interview, and you had a very sort of a… I thought of it as a kind of a pithy description of what a dialect is. Yeah, I mean, first of all, the word dialect is slightly problematic because dialect tends to come with negative connotations.

When people think of a dialect, they tend to think of some sort of substandard form of a language. So when somebody says this is a dialect of English or a dialect of German or a dialect of any other language, the assumption is that, you know, it's a non-standard version of that language. Whereas in, you know, in sociolinguistics, which is my area, my academic area, we consider dialects as varieties. This is a form of a language, this is another form of a language, and this is another one. And so differences aren't good or bad, they're just differences. And so we tend to prefer the term variety rather than dialect to avoid the negative connotation. But the other interesting thing about dialect is that a question that often we don't think of is

what really is the difference between a language and a dialect? Who decides whether one form of a language is a dialect and another form of a language is the language, so to speak. And that ultimately is a matter of power. And a group of people that holds more power in a society or a community of people that holds more power in a society their language or their version of the language is likely to be the standard and therefore the language whereas um everything else will be considered a dialect um and so it's very political and it's very much related to power and i mean i can go on about this for quite a bit, but just interesting examples of that, for example, is if you consider languages like Serbian and Croatian

in former Yugoslavia, they're considered two different languages. When Yugoslavia was a country, that language was called Serbo-Croat. And in effect, I mean, so the question is, are they two different languages or not? They're mutually intelligible. They're written in different scripts. And linguistically speaking, it's virtually impossible to resolve that question.

The question is entirely political, meaning that when Yugoslavia was a country, it was one language. Now it's split into different countries. These are separate languages. But it has very little to do or nothing to do with linguistic features and everything to do with politics and power. and everything to do with politics and power. And so how easy is that to say? I mean, nobody wants to hear that the language of their political opponents or the language of their,

even in some cases, the language of their enemy is the same as their own language. Do you find that there's a sort of a rift in how we talk about this just popularly versus how it's spoken about academically? Yeah, I think so, yes. But the thing is that academia, what academia does or should do is observe the world, essentially, and understand it and make sense of it.

And so these things that we're talking about here, it's not that the layperson has a distorted view of language, et cetera. The layperson has a view of language and academia understands it, tries to understand it. So, for example, you could have two communities, two societies speaking very, very similar languages from a purely linguistic point of view. But there might be one or two, you know, fairly insignificant differences. But those differences are symbolically extremely important because they actually mark differences and allow this community to say we speak this language and the other community to say, we speak this language, and the other community to say, we speak this other language. This is particularly useful in inverted commas when the two languages or the two versions of the same language or whatever we want to call them are written in different scripts

because the script allows you to say, look, this is a different language. And those views about language are extremely important you know um and ultimately it's what counts because linguists could say whatever they want to say but what counts is what real people it's not that we're not real people you know lay people um their views of language and what language matters or how it matters to them and what it means it's extremely important so sometimes you have the again you know you have one the pronunciation of a word that may be different across the border and that's enough to say we speak this and then you speak that you know this is what for example, across the border between Thailand and Laos.

The language spoken on either side of the border is virtually the same, but it takes a tiny difference to allow the two nations to say, this is Lao, and on the other side, this is Thai. And this is perfectly normal and happens everywhere in the world. Is there an example of where the opposite has happened,

where two languages historically considered different languages by the people that speak them suddenly become a single language? Well, I think that what comes to my mind is arabic because arabic is interesting because arabic you see arabic is very very interesting because you have a language that is formally spoken in in a lot of countries in north africa and the middle east right in actual fact a lot of people you know sort of on the ground in the home, etc., speak their own very local variety, which terms of modern standard Arabic, allows these societies to have. So, you know, what you have is languages that are used on a daily basis,

and they may be, you know, Darija in Algeria or Morocco and, you know, other local varieties of Arabic. And then you have this kind of super common language, which is modern standard Arabic, which has a strong identity, strong religion function that puts everybody together in ways which are pretty much the opposite of what I was talking about five minutes ago. So I think this answers your question, doesn't it? This is an example of the opposite of that kind of thing where one little difference marks a whole distinctiveness between two languages. This is the other way around. Oh, very expensive! Do you like it? Wow! Baby only cooks the tinola. Tinola mongol. I think with English, what you get is that the different varieties of English that exist

around the world are different, and they sound sound different and they look different in a way. You know, the vocabulary, the words differ to some extent. Accents are the most obviously different aspects of, you know, different versions of English. That's Luka's favourite. Yeah, that's Luka's favourite. Fried egg. You don't want Omar's egg? The smell?

But I think that those differences aren't on the whole. They're not as marked as they would be that they would make mutual intelligibility a problem. Even us, I don't want to cook that inside the house. It will stink. But Omar, did you try to eat that? No. It sticks in the clothes. If you imagine, imagine all varieties of English on a Venn diagram, if that makes any sense,

if you can visualize that every every variety of English is a circle. So you have American English, Nigerian English, British English, Canadian English and so on and so forth, Indian English, Nigerian English, British English, Canadian English, and so on and so forth, Indian English, and each one of them is a circle. If you represent this thing diagrammatically, what you would get is all these circles overlapping by 90%. So there's a middle part that is the same, and that is your super English. And then the bits that stick out, that don't overlap, these are the distinctive features of all these varieties of English.

But those distinctive features are not, you know, substantial enough to impede intelligibility. So, you know, with modern standard Arabic, you have an actual formal you know version of the language with english you don't quite have that you know with english you know you have standard british english you have standard american english you have dictionaries and grammar books that sort of you know codify this varieties of English, but there isn't one kind of master standard English that exists

in a dictionary or in a grammar book or anything like that. And so it's more to do with the actual use of the language and which can be, as I say, represented diagrammatically in this kind of mega Venn diagram. I don't know if that makes sense. It does make sense. But the question that I have is about that 90% overlap, the sort of the fight about that 90%. Because if that 90% is codified, and that 90% is a standard English, English, then the question then about power and who gets to decide and who's kind of held to be the originator, those questions then linger and persist, no? Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, no, I mean, you're absolutely right.

I mean, when people think of standard English around the world, they tend to think of one or two varieties, you know, and these are British English and sometimes American English. And so these two varieties are the most powerful ones historically for very clear historical reasons. And so they tend to determine a lot of that 90%. So that, that's true. Um, and that is, uh, that's just a fact, you know?

Um, and I don't think that there is something that we can, uh, argue very much against. Um, it's, it's, it's the way it is. It's true that the oldest and most powerful varieties of the language and the very reason why the language has spread around the world so much has to do with power, once again, empire. And so the logical consequence of that is that, yeah, that famous 90% is not equally shared. That's the way it is. Yeah, it's true. In a lot of places, you know, there's an effort,

which is connected to politics and cultural protectionism in some sense, where there's a real effort to keep English at bay, keep English from, quote unquote, polluting local languages. And so everything gets translated into a local language, even words like computer or phone. As a person who studies language and sort of the interplay of languages how do you think about this effort when you see this sort of drive to keep language so-called free or original or authentic?

Yeah, I mean I can see the motive behind it and I can understand why in some places these efforts are in place but these efforts aren't unsuccessful because what they try to do they try and legislate against particular language use and that's just not it's not possible people people use language you see as a matter of life you know and language you know i think one of the problem is that um we tend to consider languages as objects almost like as concrete objects so this is mine this is yours um so if i'm if i am french and i'm not using

french you know uh it's because i'm using the word French because this particular legislation exists in France, but in other places in the world as well. So, you know, if I'm French, I have to own this particular object called the French language. And I'm not really supposed to be using this other object, which is called the English language, because it belongs to other people and does not belong to me. It's not part of my identity and so on. So we tend to see languages in that way. And I think that's part of the problem. Whereas if we can see the language in a much more fluid manner and it's something that is integral to life, social practices, everything. our social practices, our everything.

And also if we can see the languages not necessarily as separated from one another, that would be one step forward. And also something that sometimes it's a bit difficult to fully comprehend is how much languages continue to change all the time so it's not they're not some kind of fixed object that you would find in the museum um it's something very much alive to use that metaphor and so um english totally coexists with other languages, not only in France, but in many other parts of the world. And, and quite happily so as well, you know, people use English and people use other

languages and mix the two and mix three languages together. And because that's physiologically what happens, you know, when you have a world that is mostly multilingual, these languages in multilingual places don't stay separated. They mix and they merge and they just blend. And that's what people do. So, you know, it's futile to say to legislate against language X or language Y, because it's impossible. You know, you get, it's almost like, I don't know, just to use a silly metaphor, you know, if you have ingredients to a recipe, if you're making a cake and you mix them together, you can't separate them again. You know, so when you have a situation where a society has two languages or more than two languages, they're there there that you can't take

them apart you can't you know you you just just part of the blend um and so i think this misconception is due to our to how much we have let our minds be persuaded that monolingualism is the norm. You know, so the German people speak German and the Italian people speak Italian and the Spanish people speak Spanish and so on and so forth. It's just a European concept that's fairly recent. You know, this idea that one nation speaks one language. In reality, in most parts of the world, people speak different languages together simultaneously. And multilingualism is the norm.

Monolingualism is the exception. This is what we need to realize. When looking at Europe and the kind of, you know, at least for Europeans, the open border policies around there. What has happened to language use? I mean, obviously, there are people that speak multiple European languages because they're living in one place and maybe studying in another or working in a third. But how has this sort of mix of people moving across borders? I mean, there still seems to be a lot of pride attached to the national language in these countries. What have you seen as a linguist in terms of how these language, these ideas about language are shifting in a place like Europe,

where people are traveling and moving and living back and forth across borders and languages? Yeah. So, you know, in a place like Europe, what you get is that more and more increasingly people mobility is, you know, it gets easier and easier. And increasingly you get people using English as a lingua franca. So, you know, you have Europeans traveling around, moving around, working in different countries

for a few years, moving else etc and so you have english as a lingua franca and that is and it's a fairly denationalized language so when europeans use english they're not using the language of the british they're using their own language and they're using it for for their own purposes And obviously, you know, if somebody, say, somebody from Italy goes to work in Germany or they move to Portugal or whatever, you know, obviously they will start speaking the language of the country as well.

But there's this huge role played by English as an international lingua franca. It just makes makes everything easier from that point of view. And you get that. You also have national languages that are becoming lingua franca in a way. So if you if you go to big cities in Europe, if you go to Milan, if you go to Berlin, and if you go to places like that, what you get is German being used as a lingua franca or Italian being used as a lingua franca by the various communities that live there. And again, you've got this wonderful mix between, you know, the languages that people carry with them, the local language and English all together.

And people don't, on the whole, people are not too worried about that. Governments now, in the last few years, at least some governments, with this rise in nationalism that we are witnessing, are beginning to express concern. Oh, you know, we should preserve national languages, et cetera, because they're part of the national identity, et cetera. But, you know, people on the ground are quite happy to be multilingual. You're listening to Ideas, we're a podcast and a broadcast

heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can find us on the CBC Listen app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad. My name is Graham Isidore. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus, and being I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder.

Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short-sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see about hidden disabilities. Short-sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. Latin, like English, was once a global language, stretching from Europe to the Middle East. Latin also pushed out local languages, but like English, was itself changed over time. This constant grappling between a global language and a local one is a given. And sometimes, despite efforts to preserve and support, a local language will lose the fight.

Related to this idea of a language becoming widespread, there's also the opposite thing that happens where languages die out. Do you think we should be concerned about dying languages or languages dying out? Yeah, I mean, this is obviously a very good question. And it's a question, you know, the answer to this question, I could very easily answer the way that would be considered nice and say, yes, we should be concerned. And efforts to preserve these languages are great and brilliant and everything. So, you know, I agree with that. We're calling this episode English, friend or frenemy? The problem is that very often these efforts are not entirely successful. I mean, sometimes they are, sometimes a bit less.

are not entirely successful. I mean, sometimes they are, sometimes a bit less. And for me, the key point is whether or not a language has an actual function in a society. It has a reason to exist. Because sometimes what you get is these efforts that try and keep a language alive almost in some sort of um artificial way um for reasons that are more about identity and you know we need this language because it's part of who we are and so on but then

do people actually speak it or do people really need to speak it um it it you know it's part of who we are and so on. But then do people actually speak it or do people really need to speak it? You know, it's a complex question. You know, I don't want to be dismissive about those efforts at all. So it's difficult to really come across in a way that doesn't suggest that I'm being dismissive about these efforts. And they're also very different in different parts of the world I mean if you look at if you look at um Welsh and Wales I think that has been quite successful um and you know and I think people are speaking Welsh and and and you know meaningfully so it's not some kind of symbolic. Okay, here's the difference that I want to really try and emphasize.

The difference between a symbolic revival of a language and a meaningful sort of boosting of the role and the forms of a language somewhere, you know. If it's meaningful and if it is felt meaningful by the people, by all means, these are great. I mean, I think this is fantastic that these things happen. If it's purely symbolic, if it's just, you know, let's have this language because, you know, because it's important, full stop, then, you know, I'm a little bit more skeptical. I guess it goes back to the analogy of like artifacts or an artifact in a museum that,

you know, I mean, it's certainly a conversation, you know, in Canada, for example, with the preservation and the teaching of indigenous languages or in places like, you know, northern Pakistan, where you have multiple languages that are spoken by, you know, a very small number of people. And so you have like these efforts to record music in those languages and say folk songs. And it's, I mean, it's beautiful to listen to. I mean, I guess part of the motivation is thinking about did this language die out naturally or was this language pushed out by some form of imperialism, whether it's local, it's a dominant local language. Does that make a difference, do you think, if it's something that was the consequence of a political power problem or if it was something that just, well, you know, people started moving away and forgetting the language and that's, which is, I guess, also political. But does that make a difference?

Well, exactly. I think that's true. And it's not not political. You know, it's almost like everything is a matter of power and politics. But so sometimes it's very obviously so. You know, sometimes it's very obviously a matter of one language pushing out another one. And once again, English is the best example of that. If you look at the entire African continent, you can see that happening and it's been happening a lot. you know, languages really being marginalized and dying out because of people choosing

to use English instead. It's a really interesting debate. Quite famously, I think in the 90s, there was a scholar, Robert Philipson, who wrote a book on linguistic imperialism really really interesting really interesting book and a lot of the content of that book was about how English has been yeah marginalizing or even destroying other languages. But there's an interesting response. One of the many responses to the book was from a Nigerian author who said that Nigerians have the intellectual capacity to make their own choices about which languages to use. And they don't need somebody to tell them oh you know you poor people you should be using Yoruba because English is bad for you and things

like that so it's very complex and and it can be it can be patronizing to say um you you you should speak your language because because my language english uh is imperialistic some patient english words are actually like yoruba words one of the tribes in nigeria one of the languages of one of the tribes in nigeria they will say oh yeah oh yeah he's like come on so you can be oh yeah let's go come on let's go waiting what waiting be this what is this so waiting is what Waiting be this. What is this? So waiting is what? Waiting be this. What is this? Wahala. Problem. Trouble. Oh, don't give me wahala. Don't give me stress. Wahala is trouble, stress. Before, before, long, long time ago. Before, before, like long, long time ago. I day come, I'm coming. I day go, I'm going. No tell me. Don't tell me. I no believe. I don't believe.

Free me. Let me be. Leave me alone. And I want to go back to this idea of multilingualism and the merging of languages, which we are now in sociolinguistics, there's this new term called translanguaging, which basically means the simultaneous use of different languages together, which happens a lot anyway. And to me, that is a very powerful frame. It's a very powerful way to conceptualize the fact that we're not dealing with one language or another but we

we're dealing with okay allowing english to enter the scene so to speak but that doesn't necessarily mean renouncing or erasing other languages necessarily so you, the two can coexist and they do. And smaller languages do tend to die out. It's not necessarily a marker of the contemporary world either. It's something that's always happened and has happened as a result of power. That's a trait of humankind and its relationship to language. Well, and I want to talk about the language mixing in just a second. comes along with this idea of power and a particular form of a language having dominance or legislation around how language can be used, is this idea of purity, language purity. And when you and I were talking in the pre-interview, I was telling you about my grandmother who spoke a rural form of the language that was my home language. And I accidentally, I'm going to say it was accidentally, used the term pure to refer to

the form that she spoke, that it was in a sense of that I realized or I thought I realized that it was perhaps an older form or a more, which felt like a more authentic form. And you were not happy about my use of the term pure. You kind of told me off about that. Talk to me a little bit about why that doesn't work as a term when talking about language. Okay. Now, the reason why that doesn't work, and the reason why I wasn't happy when you used it, is that which version of the language are we talking about? Because let's take the language, the exact language that you were referring to, right? So the rural version of a language in Pakistan.

Now, you can take a metaphorical photograph of a language at one particular point in time or even a point in geography. So time and space and say, OK, in in this village this is how they speak okay fine now 200 years ago in the same village they would speak in something different right and not even 200 years ago you don't have to go far back in history that much in future they'll speak it differently so which one is the pure language? This is another myth, the myth that somehow languages have an origin. Languages begin somewhere, and that point in time where the language begins is the purest form, and, it gets corrupted. Sometimes, you know, we tend to think of languages in that way. And it's simply not true. Languages are not born.

They don't have a point of departure. And so the language that you can document in a village or anywhere in the world is the language that they speak at that particular time. You know, and even from generation to generation even in a tiny village you might find difference and you will find differences um and so 25 years time you document the language that the children of the current adults speak and it will be different maybe not very different depending on the society and how you things move forward, etc. But it will be different. So there isn't a version of a language that we can consider pure.

Because which one is it? So that's one big reason. The other reason is that languages influence each other. And so the idea of purity it simply doesn't doesn't make sense you know if you look any i mean english english is probably the perfect example of a language that is everything but pure you know it has influences vocabulary grammar everything from all over the place and and it's certainly not pure even if you go to the if you want to consider the mythical queen's english or king's english maybe we should say now it's um that's not pure at all i mean you know there's french in it there's there's

there's everything there's greek there's italian there's germanic obviously the germanic root the viking there's all sorts of influences in the Germanic root, the Viking. There's all sorts of influences in the English language. And there is no version of it that we can consider pure. You've written about linguistic border crossings. What does that mean? Yes. Yes, it means, yeah, it's going back to this idea that languages don't have borders in the same way that countries have. So a country may have a border.

And very, very often, let's not forget, a lot of borders in the world have been created by European empires. by European empires for reasons completely other than identities or anything like that. But anyway, so languages in most cases exist and are used across borders. I mean, look, go to West Africa, for example. And what's interesting to do, if you compare the political map of West Africa, like meaning the countries in West Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, and so on, and then you compare that with the linguistic map of West Africa, what you'll see is that there is absolutely no correspondence whatsoever between the colours that you might want to use to identify each country and the colours and the areas that you

might want to use to identify the languages. There's no coincidence at all. And all those languages exist and are used totally across borders. But West Africa is an illustrative example, but it's not an exception. It's the same in lots of parts of the world as well, in Asia, South Asia. So languages are across borders. So you live in the UK, is also you know a fairly multicultural society what does this linguistic border crossing look like where you are

well in the UK as you say the society is very multicultural it's very multilingual obviously not uniformly so. If you go to a place like London, the big cities, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and so on, yeah,

you have incredible degrees of multilingualism and multiculturalism. And, I mean, London, I mean, inner London is a fantastic, In London, it's a fantastic, in the most positive way, sense of the word, mess of cultures and languages. And you get this. What happens in a place like London, actually, speaking of border crossing in the UK, is that, you know, just to use another culinary metaphor metaphor when you have lots of um imagine a blender

right so you put you put different ingredients in a blender right and then you turn it on and it makes the noise and it blends everything what happens in London linguistically is a bit like that so you have you have people um from the Caribbean people from Asia people from the Caribbean, people from Asia, people from Africa, for example, big, large communities. And the way that they speak English, so historically, they've arrived in London in the 50s and the 60s and so on, right? And what you get is this kind of blender effect where all those versions of English, sometimes even aspects of different languages come in and they kind of blend it

together and they form something which is a lot more uniform than their original distinctiveness, if that makes any sense. So what you have is this kind of London multicultural English, which takes elements of all these different types of English that have come from former colonies and have created this wonderful blended mix. So yes, that's what you get in a place like London. And I suppose you get something similar um you know in large metropolitan areas around the world but London in particular I think is

really interesting because you have the center of empire right the center of the former empire which you know where English has gone out from there and has come back to it in this different, many different forms and has re-merged into something quite different from, you know, from the way that we think of in standard English or whatever else. It's something different and diverse,

but at the same time, not so diverse, if that makes any sense. Again, if you think of the blender effect, you know, when you start blending and you haven't quite finished, you still see the bits, but it begins to become one thing. become one thing, you know. So that's what's happening with this kind of, all these Englishes that have come back to London, so to speak, and have reformed this new thing that is London multicultural English. So this idea of translanguaging, especially if these are languages that you live in on a regular basis, it deeply clashes with this idea that you've alluded to before about monolingualism being the sort of the natural state or the normal state or the neutral state. And of course, monolingualism is also attached, you know, culturally and politically in particular ways, you know, like there are political actors, but also just ordinary citizens who will use that as a sign of authentically being from somewhere or a pride

of place. How do you think about these two? And just in terms of the UK, or Canada or really anywhere else, these two phenomena coexist. As a linguist, how are you thinking about the relationship between these ideas of sort of monolingualism as some sort of natural state but then this very real reality of translanguaging? I think the whole monolingualism as an ideology is something that stemmed directly from the nation-state ideology in Europe. Because even Europe, before the nation-state became a thing, Europe was a massive language mix, and in many ways it still is.

So there was this huge emphasis on one people one language one territory um and we're talking about you know sort of between the 18th and 19th century that became very very prevalent as a it's almost like it's a political agenda and that then became the norm and multilingualism the exception in that particular frame and we're still with that in a way you know that idea is still with us I mean that period, that particular period, you know, sort of 18th century, 19th century, is also the period of imperial expansion, European imperial expansion. That's the period that gave us racism as well. Let's not forget, that's the period that gave us scientific racism, that postulated the existence of races, and it postulated that some races were superior and some races were inferior, that justified the whole imperial project. Now, the monolingualism ideology isn't a million miles away from that either, because it says there is this people, there is this, you know, people meant race as well.

You know, it was all one thing. This people with this racial connotations and with this particular territory that they inhabit. And this is their language. You know, very kind of primordial. Very sort of, and that there's other people and they inhabit this land and they speak this language and they're called this way. And this is them and this is us, right? And this is how the world was conceptualized.

And that idea is still with us. It still lingers. And in fact, if you look at what's happening in politics around the world in the last you know five five six years etc is being revived you know this all i did this populist idea of uh of of nationalism that's kind of being resurrected um it's very much based on that and and and and so that's you have even in italy now you know with with the current government i don't want to turn this into a political debate particularly but the legis the kind of legislation that you were alluding to earlier it's now being discussed in italy as well we need to protect the italian language because too much english is bad for the

italian language right because the italians are are Italian and they speak Italian and they inhabit a country called Italy. All one, one, one, one, right? And so you have that that contrasts immensely with the reality on the ground and maybe maybe partly the this kind of uh nationalistic um uh i don't know what the word is resurrection maybe it's partly due to to to some people fearing uh too much uh mixing i don't know hello everyone, everyone. Welcome to Shan's Patois Academy, Jamaican Patois Simplified. So, Jamaican Patois is made up of many different languages. However, English has the most influence. Let's look at some words. So, first rule, English words ending with ER, you will change the ER ending to A. Water, so you get water.

Sister, sister. Writer, writer. Paper, paper. Runner, runner. Teacher, teacher. So given that language is constantly changing, and that, of course, includes English as well, which is in a constant state of flux, where do you see English in the next 20, 30, 50 years? It's a million dollar question. You know, I mean, what's interesting with english is that because of what's been

happening with it the global status and so on you have two different and simultaneous forces acting upon it right on the one hand you have this kind of if you like fragmentation of English into different varieties right and the distinctiveness and everything and that that's just a direct consequence of the fact that it's so widespread right so you that that's normal that's what you'd expect right yeah the more English continues to spread around the world the more it becomes different and diverse. That's what I mean. But that's happening on one hand.

On the other hand, you have more global forces. Let's call it globalization, just to use a shortcut. So if English is used as an international language, and it is, and it's going to be used more as an international uh lingua franca then you also have something that keeps it some somehow together without legislation without uh you know dictionaries are almost like a physiological uh force that keeps it together by its use, right? So people using it internationally and as a lingua franca will keep it together.

So you have at the same time this Venn diagram. If you go back to the Venn diagram idea that I was talking about before. So if each type of English is a circle, these circles are kind of, you know, pulling apart and going back together as well. So there are two forces that pull them apart. One force does that and the other force kind of pushes them back together, pushes them back together, because that's in the nature of a large international lingua franca as English. So that's what's happening um it won't um you know sort of kind of become the only language in the world or any there's all sorts of scenarios that sometimes people read about

about english i definitely not in the next 20 30 years definitely not um will it stay the main international lingua franca in the next, say, 50 years or 100 years? That's a huge question mark. There is no reason to believe that things remain the way they are. There's no reason to believe that we are at the end of a language is tied very, very strongly to matters of power and politics, depending on how power shifts around the world, that will determine the fate of languages as well. Thank you to Mario Saraceni, reader in English language and linguistics at the University of Portsmouth, field recordings by Aparita Bandari, and Leonisa Reos. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Danielle Duval.

The senior producer is Nikola Lukšić. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly and I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.