Language Biographies

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The Geopolitics of Language in the Himalayas, Gerald Roche and Lauren Gawne

One of the things I love about working in the Himalaya, or really anywhere in the world when you start looking at linguistic diversity, is that the neat lines we think of as nations and languages rarely hold up.

Along with my La Trobe colleague Gerald Roche I wrote this introductory explainer for The Diplomat about the linguistic reality and political tensions in the Himalaya. We’ve also collaborated with Alex Davis and Ruth Gamble for The Interpreter on a piece that also looks at the environmental context that this all occurs in.

It’s been a really interesting opportunity to write about language and the linguistic context for websites that have politics and IR focus. And I get to do so while working with excellent colleagues!

Operating under the terms of one’s own language and script is empowering and a precondition for the continual development of one’s culture. And the stakes are higher than many realize.

Of the world’s approximately 7,100 living languages, about a third is endangered, meaning that less than 1000 people speak them.

I was watching TED talks, as you do, and thought ha I wonder how many languages they have and I stumbled across this language heaven! They have over 100 languages and subtitles are available in various languages which is honestly terrific! I think the scope and depth of topics offered by TED talks could be a great way to broaden your vocabulary in areas which you wouldn’t otherwise be able to particularly for intermediate and advanced learners. Anyway happy watching and learning! (Links down below, click read-more link.)

Walker acknowledged the state’s role in undermining and discouraging the use of Indigenous languages generations ago.

When the word “hygge” became popular outside Denmark a few years ago, it seemed the perfect way to express the feeling of wrapping yourself up in a crocheted blanket with a cosy jumper, a cup of tea and back-to-back episodes of The Bridge. But is it really only the Danes, with their cold Scandinavian evenings, who could have come up with a word for such a specific concept? And is it only the Swedes who could have needed the verb “fika” to describe chatting over a coffee?

The internet abounds with words that lack a single-word English equivalent. In order to be really lacking an English equivalent, it must be a single, indivisible unit of meaning, as phrases are infinitely productive and can be created on demand by combining different words. Take, for example, the claim by Adam Jacot de Boinod in I Never Knew There Was A Word For It, that Malay has a word for the gap between the teeth that English lacks: “gigi rongak.” Well, this appears to be a phrase, and it translates literally as the perfectly cromulent English phrase “tooth gap”.

In fact, English even has a single-word technical term for a gap between the teeth: “diastema.” Okay, that’s actually a Greek word, but it’s in use in English, so it’s also an English word. Does that matter?

Where we get our words from tells us something about our history. Take, for instance, Quechua—the language spoken by people indigenous to the Andes and the South American highlands. The Quechuan word for “book” is “liwru”, which comes from the Spanish word “libro,” because Spanish colonizers introduced written forms of language to the people they conquered. In fact, English does now have a word for “hygge”—it’s “hygge.”

It is often said that Eskimos have 50 words for snow, but it’s a myth that has been comprehensively dismantled, probably first of all by Laura Martin in 1986. “Eskimo” is a somewhat meaningless term anyway, but the structure of the languages spoken by peoples such as the Inuit or Aleut in the Arctic Circle are very synthetic, meaning that each “word” may comprise many parts or “morphemes”.

SPRACHBUNDS

Areal zones, linguistic areas of convergence or sprachbunds: they are areas that have different languages families but which, by prolonged contact, developed similar linguistc features, be it phonology or grammar. 

Northwest America (uvulars, aspirated consonants, ejectives, glotalized consonants, polysyntetic languages, 

Mesoamerican area (polysyntetic languages, uvulars, ejectives, rhotics, tones, nasal vowels, lateral fricatives)

Creole Caribbean (creole languages, analytical syntax)

The Andes region (highly agglutinative, uvulars, ejectives)

Standard Average Northwestern European (uvular rhotics, more analytic and fusional, obligatory subject pronouns/no null-subject, front rounded vowels)

North and Central Iberia (apical-alveolar sibilants and affricates, heavy verb conjugations, no b-v distinction)

The Balkans (definite articles as suffixes, simple vowel systems, romanian-slavic convergence)

The Caucasus (high number of phonemes, polysyntetic, ejectives, aspirates, retroflex consonants, ergativity)

Central and North Asia (correlated with Altaic) (SOV structure, vowel harmony, agglutination)

The Indian Subcontinent (retroflex plosives, split-ergativity, many cases and gendered classes or animated distinctions, vowel reduction)

China and Indochina (higly tonal languages, front rounded and back unrounded vowels, analytical syntax, few morphology)

Southern and Southwestern Africa (click consonants, simple noun class system)

Because “citizenship” and “the law of the land” and all that means precisely dick compared to human life.

Why is it fair that someone should have to live in such extreme poverty and danger with no real hope of escaping because they were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line? Why is it fair that this nation spends money they could be using to accept immigrants and add them into the system, to patrol a border, to round them up and incarcerate them instead? Why’s it fair to tell a working class white man that the immigrant “stole his job”, encourage him to hate the immigrant for it, when it was the the CEO of the company who laid him off so he could pay an undocumented immigrant an illegally low wage instead, all for the sake of that CEO’s personal profit? Why’s it fair that it’s considered unthinkable to ask a handful of billionaires to pay fair, proportional taxes -taxes that could be used to fund immigration reform and the welfare state- but the real injustice here is people not getting their paperwork done correctly for whatever reason?

@dovalayn I did. I’ve studied English for about 10 years and I have the official diploma for the C2 level (the maximum for a non-native speaker) given by the University of Cambridge.

But it’s still my 3rd language and there will be always things that escape me, mainly the slang. Always. Because you know you are always less than the majority. And it’s tiring.

That’s all I’m saying. It would be nice for once to not have to make the effort. And effort is something that no matter how many years of English class I take will always be there.

But not everyone can do that. Some people can’t afford private English academies or are bad at languages, and they should still be able to exist online as well. Why are you so bothered by people not speaking English perfectly? Or by people posting on the internet in other languages??

Native English speakers are used to having the world, and by extension all non native speakers, accommodate to their language. If someone doesn’t know English then said person is uneducated, isn’t wordly, is not qualified enough. If a person doesn’t pronounce English like a native, they’re pronouncing it wrong. Tourists are expected to speak perfect English and be proficient in it to avoid any inconvenience to native English speakers when travelling abroad to English speaking countries (USA and UK particularly, yet interestingly enough we are demanded to speak in English when these people visit our countries). These are all mindsets and situations that exist and are part of the broader context, in which English does operate on linguistic imperialism grounds on a global scale; I’m going to quote Phillipson really quickly:

Linguicism: the ideologies and structures which are used to legitimate, effectuate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (both material and non-material) between groups which are defined on the basis of their language (i.e., of their mother tongue). This condition is best seen within the broader context of linguistic imperialism - an essential constituent of imperialism as a global phenomenon involving structural relations between rich and poor countries in a world characterized by inequality and injustice.

Language expansion is considered an essential part of a core country’s policy of extending its power and influence in order to achieve its imperialistic strategies. Phillipson holds that the legitimization of English linguistic expansion has been based on two notions: ethnocentricity and educational policy, with ‘ethnocentricity’ being the “practice of judging other cultures by standards of it own.” These two practices have been used to impose a distinction between languages. It has also been a way to promote the notion of the assumed inferiority of secondary languages with respect to the norms determined by the dominant culture.

Phillipson takes this notion one step further with ethnocentricity transformed into that of ‘anglocentricity’ with the consequence that the dominance of English is justified in terms of such oppositions as superiority/inferiority, civilization/backwardness, progress/regress, the first element of which is constantly attributed to the dominant English language.

According to Phillipson education serves the imperial center by having three functions: ideological, economic and repressive. The ideological function serves as a channel for transmitting social and cultural values. In this role English is regarded as a “gateway for better communication, better education and higher standards of living.” The second function – economic – legitimizes English as a means of qualifying people to contribute to their nation and operate technology that the language provides access to. The third function – repression – serves to dominate languages.

Linguistic imperialism calls attention to the potential consequences of English teaching worldwide when center country ideologies are embedded in instruction, having the effect of legitimizing colonial or establishment power and resources, and of “reconstituting cultural inequalities between English and other languages.”

[Cited and paraphrased from

-Phillipson, R. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford. Oxford University Press. -Phillipson, R. 1988. Linguicism: structures and ideologies in linguistic imperialism. In J. Cummins and T. Skutnabb-Kangas (eds.), Minority Education: From Shame to Struggle. Avon: Multilingual Matters.]

It’s… interesting, for the lack of a better word, how non native English speakers must even accommodate to native English speakers, when in actuality non native English speakers far surpass natives by several millions and, if anything, it should be them who ought to change, not us.

English becomes our second/third/etc language, we use it with several degrees of proficiency, being affected all the time by our L1, or all the other languages that we might know, we are constantly building on our current interlanguage and gaining a better grasp on how to operate with English. When we talk or chat with other NNE speakers with whom we don’t share a language, we make ourselves understood, we manage to sort any misgiving in communication, if we make a mistake we re-phrase, re-arrange, express things in another way. We are communicating, we still get our messages across despite some slips of the tongue, little mistakes or even a few errors here and there.

We are able to engage, through the use of English, in cross-cultural exchanges, in cross-linguistic exchanges that are allowed by using English as a lingua franca. We are making the language ours, we’re reclaiming the language that for so long was used to shush us down and we’re using it as an asset, we’re using it as a weapon, we’re using it so our voices cannot be silenced any more.

Our messages do get across, they can be understood. When native English speakers claim our Englishes aren’t clear, or we aren’t making any sense, they are really not making the extra effort. In short, many are uncapable of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural exchanges and communication. It’s easier to say we don’t make sense, and by extension snuffing us out, than paying attention to what we are saying.

And we don’t only have to defend our languages and our cultures in a globalised world (in which the normalised culture is that of the center), but we also have to use English as a tool for doing it.

I mean, having been part of vibrant internet communities with people from over a dozen countries (the majority from US, Australia, UK, Ireland, New Zeeland and Canada, I’ll grant, but still, plenty from others), I certain appreciate the internationality of the internet and as an English speaker, I like how I can speak to so many people from so many places without needing to learn a new language, and I’m not saying people should stick to their fellow… same language speakers always, but… I’m not entirely sure what the point of the post is? You guys chose to come here, to a website managed by an American company and with lots and lots of English speakers… but aren’t you quite likely to run into someone else who is also a nonnative speaker of English (but not a speaker your mother tongue either) and you’re using English as your Lingua Franca, as it is in so many places on the Internet.

Using English would be part of the price of doing business in an English language space, just like I’d have to learn say, Japanese if I wanted to go into a Japanese language space online, or if I was in Japan and wanted to get away from the tourist-manager people who speak English as part of their job to get English-speaking tourists to part with their money (and for the record, when I was in Italy for a few weeks years ago, I made an effort to speak Italian with what little command of the language I had, though it wasn’t much and I didn’t go far beyond the core touristy areas anyway).

No worries ;) 

The thing is: Yes, there are. And all fandom members from non-English-speaking countries who don’t speak English or don’t speak it well enough to read/write/generally consume fandom content in English do use these spaces. And people who are good enough at English sometimes use both. Especially languages with lots of speakers will have ETA: huge fairly big fandom communities in their own language. But people who speak English as a second/third etc. language and whose native language doesn’t have a fandom community that’s all that big will - if they’re capable - take part in English-speaking fandom. There is incomparably more content. 

And that is precisely due to English being spoken by everyone – the point of this post isn’t: “IT’S BAD THAT ENGLISH IS THE LINGUA FRANCA”.

No, we’re glad that we have a lingua franca that means we can communicate without having to learn everybody’s language first.

The poster before me even said it:

We are able to engage, through the use of English, in cross-cultural exchanges, in cross-linguistic exchanges that are allowed by using English as a lingua franca.

The point of this post is that often enough, native speakers will a) not even think about the fact that lots of people they talk to are not native speakers, and b) belittle non-native speakers’ for their “inferior” English. While at the same time, most of the time they don’t have to put any effort at all into international (online) communication - because everyone learnt their language.

As the post and its additions say several times:

I wonder if native English speakers appreciate how much more comfortable the internet is for them than for the rest of the world 

But it’s still my 3rd language and there will be always things that escape me

Why are you so bothered by people not speaking English perfectly?

Since you think my English isn’t good enough

If someone doesn’t know English then said person is uneducated, isn’t wordly, is not qualified enough.

Tourists are expected to speak perfect English and be proficient in it to avoid any inconvenience to native English speakers when travelling abroad to English speaking countries 

When native English speakers claim our Englishes aren’t clear, or we aren’t making any sense, they are really not making the extra effort.

Because no matter how good our English is, how proficient we are, someone is always going to argue we aren’t good enough, that we aren’t trying hard enough.

since I wasn’t a native speaker, I obviously didn’t understand what she was saying and therefore my arguments were invalid.

The issue is this: 

@bringbuckyback you’re not understanding what we are saying.

No one ever said you and other English speakers personally are oppressing anyone. What we’re saying is that you’re lucky because you didn’t have to do the huge effort we did. And if you can’t see why it’s a huge effort to learn a foreign language and use it for everything, or why it’s a problem that people are replacing their own native languages for the one they are made to believe is prestigious, then the misunderstanding goes way further than this post.

When I made the original post I did in a moment of frustration, I didn’t even tag it or anything and wasn’t expecting it to get any attention. But seeing the notes, comments like yours and many, many more native English speakers (mainly USAmericans) make very ignorant comments I’m glad I made it, because it’s unbelievable that many of you don’t know this. But we do not have a choice to learn English. It’s a must. It’s not that you personally will shun me or anyone else for not speaking English, obviously not. It’s that we wouldn’t be able to live without one of those Cambridge English certificates. We can’t get hired anywhere without at least a B2 in English. We can’t even graduate college without an English certificate, even when our degree has nothing to do with English. We also must study English all years of mandatory education (so that’s 12 years), but English in school sucks to you either pay for a private academy or you fail, which is a huge problem for many families.

And the reason why English is the international language isn’t because it’s one of the most widely spoken languages on the world, that’s more of a consequence. England made sure that their language would be the global one as part of their programme to impose itself on the rest of the world (google English imperialism).

In your comments you seem to be looking for something to do with this information. Well, I’m not saying you should “be overtly grateful for being English” nor that you “thank the lord everyday for speaking the language you speak”. Honestly, I wasn’t asking anything of you with this post? I was just explaining our situation, which hundreds of people related to so…

Idk, if I made a post saying for example “that moment when you’re shopping and there isn’t any shampoo left of the brand you like :/” would you come to comment we’re “acting oppressed” and misinterpreting you and calling you an oppressor because you’ve never been in that situation yourself? No. Not every single post about an experience thousands of people face has to apply to you.

But well, if your reaction to a post of someone saying “uff I wonder what it’s like to have stuff in my own language” was to get so defensive, I imagine you feel guilty? And that’s why you ask what to do with it? To start with, look at what people are explaining in the notes and understand that WE DON’T HAVE A CHOICE. English is mandatory for most of the world. And for one post that explains a situation of distress that you can’t relate to there’s no need to get like that, calling others dumb and “acting opressed” (when the word oppression was never part of this post in the first place).

You showed in your comments that this post was useful in the first place, because when I made it I assumed all English speakers were aware of the fact that we are forced to do so many things in your language and your culture, but apparently not. And that’s normal given how self-centered Anglo media is (especially USAmerican media), so before you misinterpret my words again, I’m not saying you personally are to blame for everything. It’s a system of things that benefits the legacy of the British empire.

Like @lordhellebore said, “if everyone else is using your language, at least acknowledge that you have it easier and don’t ridicule other for not being 100% perfect/fluent or adapting the language a little” and, I would add, don’t ridicule others for having different experiences than you either.

@dovalayn I did. I’ve studied English for about 10 years and I have the official diploma for the C2 level (the maximum for a non-native speaker) given by the University of Cambridge.

But it’s still my 3rd language and there will be always things that escape me, mainly the slang. Always. Because you know you are always less than the majority. And it’s tiring.

That’s all I’m saying. It would be nice for once to not have to make the effort. And effort is something that no matter how many years of English class I take will always be there.

But not everyone can do that. Some people can’t afford private English academies or are bad at languages, and they should still be able to exist online as well. Why are you so bothered by people not speaking English perfectly? Or by people posting on the internet in other languages??

Native English speakers are used to having the world, and by extension all non native speakers, accommodate to their language. If someone doesn’t know English then said person is uneducated, isn’t wordly, is not qualified enough. If a person doesn’t pronounce English like a native, they’re pronouncing it wrong. Tourists are expected to speak perfect English and be proficient in it to avoid any inconvenience to native English speakers when travelling abroad to English speaking countries (USA and UK particularly, yet interestingly enough we are demanded to speak in English when these people visit our countries). These are all mindsets and situations that exist and are part of the broader context, in which English does operate on linguistic imperialism grounds on a global scale; I’m going to quote Phillipson really quickly:

Linguicism: the ideologies and structures which are used to legitimate, effectuate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (both material and non-material) between groups which are defined on the basis of their language (i.e., of their mother tongue). This condition is best seen within the broader context of linguistic imperialism - an essential constituent of imperialism as a global phenomenon involving structural relations between rich and poor countries in a world characterized by inequality and injustice.

Language expansion is considered an essential part of a core country’s policy of extending its power and influence in order to achieve its imperialistic strategies. Phillipson holds that the legitimization of English linguistic expansion has been based on two notions: ethnocentricity and educational policy, with ‘ethnocentricity’ being the “practice of judging other cultures by standards of it own.” These two practices have been used to impose a distinction between languages. It has also been a way to promote the notion of the assumed inferiority of secondary languages with respect to the norms determined by the dominant culture.

Phillipson takes this notion one step further with ethnocentricity transformed into that of ‘anglocentricity’ with the consequence that the dominance of English is justified in terms of such oppositions as superiority/inferiority, civilization/backwardness, progress/regress, the first element of which is constantly attributed to the dominant English language.

According to Phillipson education serves the imperial center by having three functions: ideological, economic and repressive. The ideological function serves as a channel for transmitting social and cultural values. In this role English is regarded as a “gateway for better communication, better education and higher standards of living.” The second function – economic – legitimizes English as a means of qualifying people to contribute to their nation and operate technology that the language provides access to. The third function – repression – serves to dominate languages.

Linguistic imperialism calls attention to the potential consequences of English teaching worldwide when center country ideologies are embedded in instruction, having the effect of legitimizing colonial or establishment power and resources, and of “reconstituting cultural inequalities between English and other languages.”

[Cited and paraphrased from

-Phillipson, R. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford. Oxford University Press. -Phillipson, R. 1988. Linguicism: structures and ideologies in linguistic imperialism. In J. Cummins and T. Skutnabb-Kangas (eds.), Minority Education: From Shame to Struggle. Avon: Multilingual Matters.]

It’s… interesting, for the lack of a better word, how non native English speakers must even accommodate to native English speakers, when in actuality non native English speakers far surpass natives by several millions and, if anything, it should be them who ought to change, not us.

English becomes our second/third/etc language, we use it with several degrees of proficiency, being affected all the time by our L1, or all the other languages that we might know, we are constantly building on our current interlanguage and gaining a better grasp on how to operate with English. When we talk or chat with other NNE speakers with whom we don’t share a language, we make ourselves understood, we manage to sort any misgiving in communication, if we make a mistake we re-phrase, re-arrange, express things in another way. We are communicating, we still get our messages across despite some slips of the tongue, little mistakes or even a few errors here and there.

We are able to engage, through the use of English, in cross-cultural exchanges, in cross-linguistic exchanges that are allowed by using English as a lingua franca. We are making the language ours, we’re reclaiming the language that for so long was used to shush us down and we’re using it as an asset, we’re using it as a weapon, we’re using it so our voices cannot be silenced any more.

Our messages do get across, they can be understood. When native English speakers claim our Englishes aren’t clear, or we aren’t making any sense, they are really not making the extra effort. In short, many are uncapable of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural exchanges and communication. It’s easier to say we don’t make sense, and by extension snuffing us out, than paying attention to what we are saying.

And we don’t only have to defend our languages and our cultures in a globalised world (in which the normalised culture is that of the center), but we also have to use English as a tool for doing it.